V sign

A scientist at the Johnson Space Center flashes victory signs after a successful extraction.

The V sign is a hand gesture in which the first and second fingers are raised and parted, whilst the remaining fingers are clenched. With palm inwards, in the United Kingdom and some other English speaking countries, it is an obscene insulting gesture of defiance. During the World War II, Winston Churchill popularised its use as a "Victory" sign (for V as in victory) initially with palm inwards and later in the war palm outwards. With the palm outwards, it is also used to mean "Peace", a meaning that became popular in the United States during the peace movement of the 1960s.

Current usage

File:Bunny ears.jpg

President George H. W. Bush doing the bunny ears gesture on Barbara Bush

• back of the hand facing the signer
  • Two – nonverbal communication of quantity
  • Victory – was first popularised by Winston Churchill, and sometimes is made using both hands, or upraised arms as Richard Nixon used to do. Now commonly used by fans of the University of Southern California and Villanova University athletic teams
  • Peace or Friend – used by peace groups and counter-culture groups, from Chicago to Tiananmen Square.
  • During children's games in Belgium, meaning one requests a "time-out".
  • Bunny ears – used facetiously behind the head of a subject of a photograph.

• Palm facing the signer
  • Two – indicating quantity, although more common with palm turned around.
  • Insulting – largely restricted to the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
  • Peace – in the United States without respect to the direction. Sometimes used as an informal valediction.

• Used with other movement:
  • Air quotes – flexing fingers, palm out, both hands.
  • When the palm faces the signer and the fingers are tilted at an angle, represents permission or desire to extend a sexual invitation.
  • When held in front of the mouth with the palm facing the signer, coupled with a licking gesture, represents the act of cunnilingus.
  • When done with the back of the hand facing outward and turned side ways among teenagers means "gangsta."
  • The letter V, in ASL – used when spelling. This handshape is also used in a number of signs, including "to see/look" done in a similar manner to the military use.

V sign as an insult

The insulting version of the gesture (with the palm inwards) is often compared to the offensive gesture known as "the finger". The "two-fingered salute", or "bowfinger", as it is also known, is commonly performed by flicking the V upwards from wrist or elbow. The V sign, when the palm is facing toward the person giving the sign, has long been an insulting gesture in England, and later in the rest of the United Kingdom; its use is largely restricted to the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. It is frequently used to signify defiance (especially to authority), contempt or derision, and is often accompanied by the phrases "Up yours," or "Fuck off."

As an example of the V sign (palm inward) as an insult, on 1 November 1990, The Sun, a popular British tabloid, ran an article on its front page with the headline "Up Yours, Delors" next to a large hand making a V sign protruding from a Union flag cuff. The Sun urged its readers to stick two fingers up at then President of the European Commission Jacques Delors, who had suggested that more European integration might be a good thing. The article attracted a number of complaints about its alleged racism, but the now defunct Press Council rejected the complaints after the editor of The Sun stated that the paper reserved the right to use vulgar abuse in the interests of Britain.

For a time in the UK, "a Harvey (Smith)" became a way of describing the insulting version of the V sign, much as "the word of Cambronne" is used in France, or "the Trudeau salute" is used to describe the one-fingered salute in Canada. This happened because, in 1971, show-jumper Harvey Smith was disqualified for making a televised V sign to the judges after winning the British Show Jumping Derby at Hickstead. (His win was reinstated two days later.)

Harvey Smith pleaded that he was simply using a Victory sign, a defence also used by other figures in the public eye. Sometimes foreigners visiting the countries mentioned above use the "two-fingered salute" without knowing it is offensive to the natives, for example when ordering two beers in a noisy pub, or in the case of the United States president George H. W. Bush, who while touring Australia in 1992, attempted to give a "peace sign" to a group of farmers in Canberra—who were protesting about U.S. farm subsidies—and instead gave the insulting V sign.

Origins

An early recorded use of the 'two-fingered salute' is in the Macclesfield Psalter of c.1330 (in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), being made by a glove in the psalter’s marginalia.

According to a popular legend the two-fingers salute and/or V sign derives from the gestures of longbowmen fighting in the English army at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. The story claims that the French claimed that they would cut off the arrow-shooting fingers of all the English longbowmen after they had won the battle at Agincourt. But the English came out victorious and showed off their two fingers, still intact. Historian Juliet Barker quotes Jean Le Fevre (who fought on the English side at Agincourt) as saying that Henry V included a reference to the French cutting off longbowmen's fingers in his pre-battle speech. If this is correct it confirms that the story was around at the time of Agincourt, although it doesn't necessarily mean that the French practised it, just that Henry found it useful for propaganda, and it does not show that the 'two-fingers salute' is derived from the hypothetical behaviour of English archers at that battle. Indeed, there is no record of this explanation for the V sign before the 1970s, and it seems to be a popular myth.

The first definitive known reference to the ‘V-sign’ in French is in the works of François Rabelais, a sixteenth-century satirist."

It was not until the start of the 20th century that clear evidence of the use of insulting V sign in England became available, when in 1901 a worker outside Parkgate ironworks in Rotherham used the gesture, (captured on the film), to indicated he did not like being filmed. Peter Opie interviewed children in the 1950s and observed in The Lore And Language Of Schoolchildren that the much older thumbing of the nose (cock-a-snook) had been replaced by the V-sign as the most common insulting gesture used in the playground.

Desmond Morris discussed various possible origins of the V sign in Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, (published 1979) and came to no definite conclusion:

because of the strong taboo associated with the gesture (its public use has often been heavily penalized). As a result, there is a tendency to shy away from discussing it in detail. It is "known to be dirty" and is passed on from generation to generation by people who simply accept it as a recognized obscenity without bothering to analyse it... Several of the rival claims are equally appealing. The truth is that we will probably never know...

— Desmond Morris

Winston Churchill and the victory sign

Winston Churchill waving the V sign

During the German occupation of Jersey, a stonemason repairing the paving of the Royal Square incorporated a V for victory under the noses of the occupiers. This was later amended to refer to the Red Cross ship Vega. The addition of the date 1945 and a more recent frame has transformed it into a monument

Winston Churchill used a V sign in both versions to symbolize "V for Victory" during World War II. Early on in the war he used palm in (sometimes with a cigar between the fingers). Later in the war he used palm out. It is thought that the aristocratic Churchill made the change after it was explained to him what it signified to the other classes in Britain. He developed the idea from a BBC campaign.

During World War II, Victor de Lavelaye suggested that Belgians, who were chalking up the letters RAF, should add a V for victoire or vrijheid (respectively French for "victory" and Dutch for "freedom"). Since V stands for "victory" in French, Charles de Gaulle used it in every speech (from 1942–1969). This idea was developed by the BBC and on 20 July 1941 a campaign was launched with a message from Churchill for occupied Europe. The Channel islanders also joined in the Churchill's V sign campaign by daubing the letter 'V' (for Victory) over German signs.

Douglas Ritchie, of the BBC European Service, suggested an audible V using the Morse code rhythm—three dots and a dash. This is also the rhythm of the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (V is the Roman numeral for 5), and it was used as the call-sign by the BBC in its foreign language programmes to occupied Europe for the rest of the war. The irony that they were composed by a German was not lost on many of the audience or for the more musically educated that it was "Fate knocking on the door" of the Third Reich. ()

A rhythm similar to that of the Morse V rhythm is featured prominently in the bass line for the Clash song London Calling. The song's title was taken from the BBC World Service's station identification.

Vietnam War, victory and peace

Nixon departing the White House on 9 August 1974

U.S. President Richard Nixon used it to signal victory, an act which became one of his best-known trademarks. He also used it on his departure from public office following his resignation in 1974.

A similar sign was used in protests against the Vietnam War (and subsequent anti-war protests) and by the counterculture as a sign of peace. Because the hippies of the day often flashed this sign (palm out) while vocalizing "Peace", it became popularly known (through association) as the peace sign.

Japan and the V sign in Photographs

During the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, figure skater Janet Lynn stumbled into Japanese pop culture when she fell during a free-skate period—but continued to smile even as she sat on the ice. Though she placed only third in the actual competition, her cheerful diligence and indefatigability resonated with many Japanese viewers, making her an overnight celebrity in Japan. Afterwards, Lynn (a peace activist) was repeatedly seen flashing the V sign in the Japanese media. Though the V sign was known of in Japan prior to Lynn's use of it there (from the post-WWII Allied occupation of Japan), she is credited by some Japanese for having popularized its use in amateur photographs. According to the other theory, the V sign was popularized by the actor and singer Jun Inoue, who showed it in the Conica photo camera commercial in 1972.

Other

• In Unicode, the V sign "Victory Hand" symbol is U+270C (_✌).

References

• Desmond Morris with Peter Collett, Peter Marsh and Marie O'Shaughnessy. Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution. London: Jonathan Cape, 1979. ISBN 0-224-01570-2; NY: Stein and Day, ISBN 0-8128-2607-8

Further reading

• Photos of the V sign:
  • Churchill Outside no. 10
  • Churchill Victory Sign
  • Nixon departing office
  • An Iraqi woman after casting her vote at a polling station in Baghdad, in 2005
  • Paavo Väyrynen after Finnish Centre party named him foreign trade and development minister

• The V sign in the news:
  • Guardian 6 June 2002: In pictures the V sign
  • Sky News 18 June 2004: OAP fined £100 for V sign
• Urban Legends Reference Pages: pluck yew
• Desmond Morris book list